Across Sri Lanka, the country’s flag is flown at half-mast on 12th July to mourn the sudden assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “We have lost a prime minister who gave leadership to Asia,” wrote Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe in an obituary guestbook commemorating the Japanese leader. Despite Sri Lanka’s melancholic posture towards the Japanese leader’s demise, Sri Lanka’s foreign policy has posed a consistent thorn in Abe’s vision for a “free and open Asia-Pacific”.

In early April, hundreds of thousands of primarily Sinhala protestors filled the streets of Colombo, enduring tear gas and water cannons, as they inched closer to the presidential compounds, demanding the resignation of Sri Lanka’s President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Writing in The Diplomat, Viruben Nandakumar stresses the need for Indian diplomats to end a policy of appeasement and soberly reflect on the currents of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, which prohibit further integration between India and Sri Lanka.

In his inaugural speech, Sri Lanka’s current President Ranil Wickremesinghe signalled a shift in foreign policy to favour relations with India by praising their aid efforts and lamented on cancelled investment projects. Indian investment projects were abandoned for “baseless reasons”, claimed Sri Lanka’s president.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Viruben Nandakumar highlights that despite a change in figureheads, Sri Lanka’s military maintains an inflated role in the running of the state.

“Not only must Sri Lanka’s protesters heed that call and refocus their efforts toward dismantling the militarization of the state, but so too must the international community”, he writes.

Sri Lanka’s former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a war criminal accused of overseeing some of the most heinous atrocities of the 21^st century. Under his command Sri Lankan troops unleashed an offensive that saw widespread violations of international law and left as many as 169,796 Tamils unaccounted for. Out of all the countries in the world, Singapore has a particular duty to hold him to account. It must do so before he flees.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the 2019 presidential election. It is no secret that it has succeeded in instilling Islamophobia among the Sinhalese population. 6.9 million voters – mostly Sinhalese Buddhists – elected him. They celebrated the victory with loud cheers and by serving milk rice, saying that they have got a solid leader for the country.

Writing in the Caravan, Viruben Nandakumar details the worrying militarisation of Sri Lankan society and the influence Sri Lanka’s war crimes accused security forces continue to wield.

“While the country’s political establishment and civil government face a crisis of legitimacy, the military seems poised to weather the turmoil with its considerable might intact or even enhanced relative to other centres of power,” he writes.